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GH-MoNGo — Influence Map
Published: 2010-08-22 19:43:17 +0000 UTC; Views: 2315; Favourites: 11; Downloads: 30
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Because I'm a giant trendwhore.
Original here: [link]
I have too many influences to name, but here are just a few.
1: Samwise Didier
I used to be a Warcrack addict - Warcrack III, not World of Warcrack. I've never played World of Warcrack, and probably never will. But Samwise's art is awesome, and I consider his work to be one of the biggest reasons why I started down the path I am now.
2: Gary Larson
6: Bill Watterson
I never read comic books when I was a kid, with a few exceptions. My parents wouldn't buy them for me, and I wasn't really interested. I did, however, love the Sunday newspaper comics, and these two in particular.
3: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
4: Hokusai
9: Honore Daumier
I learned a lot about composition and color by studying the work of these three artists in particular. Formal perspective can take a back seat and still be believable if it fits within the context of the image.
5: ~MatthewSmith
I originally said he was the only artist who I would claim to be a "fanboy" of. I have since retracted that to include a couple others (who are also on this list).
7: Frank Frazetta
Everyone who works even remotely within the fantasy genre has been influenced by him. And anyone who says they haven't been is a filthy liar.
8: Peter de Seve
10: William Stout
Included on the short list of my "fanboy" artists. Both of them have tremendous artistic range, so it doesn't quite suit either of them to only include one image of theirs on this map.
11: Matt Groening
Because I used to be a huge Simpsons fan just like everyone else, and it showed up in my artwork at a very early age. It still shows through now and again.
12: Maurice Sendak
16: Graeme Base
Two of the most prominent childrens' book illustrators around, their work has stuck with me for years. I particularly like how they go about using line for texture and value and wash for everything else, and how they both achieve depth using that technique.
13: Aardman Animation
I admit, I was the biggest Wallace and Gromit fanboy this side of Timbuktu (and I met the guy who was a bigger fan than me who lived on the other side of Timbuktu at Wallace and Gromit con '97). When people say my work looks "too cartooney", they are probably referring to this influence here.
14: Thomas Moran
I'd sell my soul to the devil if I could paint naturalistic color and make it glow like Thomas Moran does. I'd probably sell your soul too.
15: Arthur Rackham
I consider him to be to childrens' books what Frank Frazetta is to fantasy art. Again, anyone who works anywhere near this genre and claims they have not been influenced by Rackham is a filthy liar.
Yeah, that's just the tip of the iceberg, but I'm too lazy to find more.
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Comments: 49
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I actually meet Peter De Seve in person when they had that Blue Sky Exhibit at the Norman Rockwell Museum. And even drawn a picture of Scrat painting a picture of his acorn. Lucky me!
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Niiice. I wanted to add Maurice Sendak to mine but I ran out of room!
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Lol... when I saw 13 it kinda reminded me of our local cartooning industry.. there are these shorts that are made in similar fashion. Overal, now I thin I need to make one of these.
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*harumphs and snorts* I'm not on this list.
Awesome selction to say the least.
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Some cool artists here. I did think of Sendak and Wallace and Grommit when I saw your art first.
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The Jabberwock whiffling through the tulgey wood! Brilliant. Graeme Base is a sterling artist.
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Indeed he is. I'm so glad I got a hold of his art book.
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And did you get a hold of his children's books? They're something of a staple amongst Australian children.
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the number 10..is that from the movie "wizards"?
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it most certainly is. i recognized it right away
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It could be. I'm not sure.
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i've only been indirectly influenced by Frazetta at best. you can call me a liar if you'd like but it's true that his work has no direct influence on mine.
as apparently unbelievable as it may sound i had never even heard or seen his work until this year. i do think he's a great artist i don't really see how he's a required influence for fantasy artists.
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Indirect influence is still influence.
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which is why i said i've only been indirectly influenced AT BEST. why does everyone think he's a required influence for a fantasy artist though?
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I know, and that's why I said it's still influence~.
Because he impacted the fantasy world in such a way that influence so many artists and continues to do so. He's a huge artist, he helped the genre evolve. Since he's had that big of an impact, it's hard to escape him.
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err first line was supposed to be "i don't think..."
also sorry for keeping on i'm not trying to be annoying. i just don't feel like he's had any real influence on my artwork.
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i do think he was a great artist i just don't think he's really as influential to all fantasy artists as so many people make him out to be. check out charles vess and alan lee's stuff for instance.
what exactly did he do that makes his work so special and such an influence? how exactly did he help the genre evolve? i may be missing something here seeing as how i did only hear about him this year
what did he do that someone couldn't have gotten the same sort of influence out of various art and artists that came before him or artists working outside of the fantasy art genre?
is it impossible for someone to be, instead, influenced by old myths, legends, fairy tales, folklore, Tolkien, and forgotten realms books along with nature, anime, manga, renaissance/greek/baroque art and still end up painting fantasy art without having Frazetta as an influence?
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Charles Vess and Alan Lee are still very different than Frank Frazetta. If you stuck those two artists beside Frank, Frank would stick out like a sore thumb simply because of the kind of fantasy that he does. It's dark, it's gritty, it's not entirely stuck in medieval times and it's very very low-fantasy.
Frank has exposure. Frank did comic books(of varying kinds), movie posters, book covers, album art and various other works and he did them well. He wasn't a one trick pony and people loved his stuff. He was hot stuff in the media and lots of people wanted him to work for them. He had an entire movie made that was inspired by his paintings and revolved around that style. Then there's Conan The Barbarian which is extremely popular and influenced so many artists that grew up with that. Samwise Didier's art wouldn't be the same without Frank because he read Conan religiously as a kid and it's obvious when you look at both their artworks that Samwise integrated the style. Even anime has been influenced by Frazetta, especially some of Nintendo's artists who have admitted it. However on the same note, Frazetta's artwork(and others) wouldn't be the same without George B. Bridgman.
It's art history, nothing more. Why do we learn about art history? So we know why and how things came to be. You can still draw fantasy art without even seeing Frazetta's works, but he's impacted the genre in such a way that he's gained icon status. He changed things and is monumentally influential because of what he achieved. I don't even think he's the absolute best artist, but I deeply respect what he did. Some of my favourite artists would not be the same without what he brought to the industry. He didn't just inspire visual artists either, he inspired musicians and writers as well. And Frank gave back as well, he and his wife made contributions to artists rights.
Frank left a huge mark and you'd have to ignore all fantasy art(and album art and game art) that came after he was around to not step in his influence somewhere, even if you don't particularly integrate it directly.
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... an influence that isn't integrated isn't an influence. it's simply something one likes.
after all the reading and such i've been doing i don't believe frazetta to be a required influence for modern fantasy artists. i do believe however that he had a lot to do with the more mainstream acceptance of fantasy art/illustration/comics. i don't think he really changed the fantasy art scene that much outside of the ignoring the original description of conan's appearance and dress and making his own version more popular. while having influence on a genre is a big thing there are multiple kinds of influence.
just because he influences a genre doesn't mean he influences personal work of everyone who works within the genre. as a whole i've been relatively out of the loop as far as more modern artists go. before this conversation with you and :devGHMongo: causing me to look up stuff, i hadn't even heard of Charles Vess or Alan Lee but i'm glad the conversations happened because i really like their work. in fact it's all been quite recent that i even started checking out any fantasy artists. you mentioned that Samwise Didier was influenced by Conan but outside of my WoW fanart my own personal art doesn't really have any influence from Samwise.
my earliest influences were real life. granted it was little kid scribblings so they had craptastic anatomy if they were people. after that came sonic the hedgehog. i used to be a total sonic the hedgehog nut drawing sonic all the time back in the sonic 1, 2, and 3 days. by the time i was 13 i had dropped that and started drawing some things with fantasy elements (dragons, sword wielding people and the like) otherwise it was things like people sitting around a campfire. then there was that whole antrhopomorph phase i went through then back to fantasy stuff i didn't even start reading fantasy books until sometime in 2009 and even then it wasn't anything specifically about barbarians and the barbarians they did have in them weren't anything like conan. i'll be honest i hate the whole conan franchise. i hated the movies. what i did like were old myths legends and fairy tales. so i draw things from them.
i never really have been a big art buff outside of enjoying to make it so any artistic influence i got came from the art history junk i'd have had to learn during school but none of that ever had any frazetta in it or any comic book/fantasy/video game art in it.
i believe i can honestly say that for my own personal art (outside of any fan art) that i'm not influenced by frazetta.
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You're taking this way too personally and missing the point.
after all the reading and such i've been doing i don't believe frazetta to be a required influence for modern fantasy artists.
No one said he's required. No one said you have to be influenced by him, it's just hard to ignore that he has influence over the genre. You're going to step in it eventually so long as you continue to enjoy modern fantasy.
i do believe however that he had a lot to do with the more mainstream acceptance of fantasy art/illustration/comics.
And I would say that did change the genre.
but outside of my WoW fanart my own personal art doesn't really have any influence from Samwise.
Then you have been influenced by Frazetta in some way.
i believe i can honestly say that for my own personal art (outside of any fan art) that i'm not influenced by frazetta.
But that's still influence! If you say the exception is fan art, then you have been in some way. I'm beginning to think that you take issue with this because might possibly dislike Frazetta enough to be bothered that he has been such an influential fantasy artist. You haven't proven to me that you haven't been influenced in some way by Frazetta, because Samwise wasn't influenced by Conan only, he was influenced by Frazetta's artwork too. There are literally parallels in how they draw things and Samwise's style is essentially now the core style of the Warcraft series. Not only that, but several of the other WoW artists have been influenced or greatly love the work of Frazetta. I'm really not all that certain that Samwise's artwork would look the same without his influences.
Indirect influence is still influence. For example, if you happened to enjoy Bruce Lee then why not respect his teacher, Ip Man? Would Bruce Lee be here without such a good teacher(who was amazing in his own right)? Maybe you don't like martial arts, maybe you just like martial art movies, but the point is without Ip Man there may have not been a Bruce Lee as we know him at all. So artistically and stylistically, where would the artists who grew up with Frazetta, some of which started to draw because of him, where would they be if there was never a Frank Frazetta? And not just Frank, because there are obviously other artists who are just as big or almost as big and influential as him. Do you think the art we have now would be the same? Do you think fantasy would be as mainstream as it is now? Hey, maybe it is possible, but the fact is they helped pave the way.
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mongo said anyone who draws fantasy and says they aren't influenced by frazetta is a liar. to me that says he's a required influence.
nah it's not so much influence on me for fan art because the "influences" in my fan art is likely to only be in the fan art of that certain thing that was created with those influences. if i do a fan art of something like say... rurouni kenshin it's going to lack the "influences" present in the world of warcraft fanart but it will be replaced by a different set of "influences".
i try to make the characters look like the characters.
it's like drawing a person. there are a lot of characteristics of a person if you change or leave out too many of them they just don't look like the same person or could easily be mistaken as another person.
so if i'm gonna draw a night elf he isn't gonna be built like Bruce Lee or spiderman. yes, Bruce Lee and spiderman are muscular but they're more lean instead of bulky. if they put a long sleeve shirt they have a good chance of looking like a skinny dude instead of epically ripped. so the night elf's gonna be kind of bulky otherwise he'd probably look more like a purple skinned blood elf with droopy ears.
it's the specific fanart that is "influenced" not me. most of the things i would want to emulate in my personal art come from before frazetta. as of yet the things i'd want to emulate that came after him were unlikely to be influenced by him even if the artist took some influence from frazetta.
influence is a funny thing like that. it's kind of like genes being passed on to children, just because a parent has the gene for red hair doesn't mean the child will have it.
person A is influenced by person B, C, and Frazetta. so lets say person D is influenced by A. however, D isn't interested in emulating everything about A's work he just likes the influences that came from person B. so he emulates that bit about A's work. therefore, D is indirectly influenced by B but not by C or Frazetta.
what i said about Frazetta ignoring the original description of conan wasn't trying to take away frazetta's influence on didier. i was just saying that because it seems he was quite famous for conan but he didn't even bother to get any description of him or read the book before he painted the cover. that i think started his whole conan run. what i was getting at there was that he most certainly changed the "face" of conan even though i don't think he really changed the face of fantasy art.
as i said as far as fantasy art goes i've pretty much been living under a rock until quite recently and even then it's less influence, more enjoyment.
just because i like something doesn't mean i want to emulate it. i like didier's art. it's fun to look at but when i think about drawing things like him the thought is not appealing to me. i just don't have a desire to draw like him. the same goes for frazetta's work. i like some of it. just plain don't like some of it but none of it is without skill. i just don't have any desire to emulate him.
i don't dislike frazetta i just don't think it's near as likely that everyone in fantasy art is influenced by him as people say.
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You don't have to emulate someone to be influenced by them and I think that's why you're failing to grasp what we mean by influence(btw the people who are well known for drawing for Tolkein's stories were influenced by Frazetta's early work as well.) I don't think this is going to go anywhere, though, as you seem to keep missing this and I don't want to spam this page anymore than it has been already.
Have a nice day/afternoon/night.
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i hope you have a nice day/afternoon/night as well.
you can chalk it up to a difference of opinion if you want and just ingore this. however, i still feel the need to say it.
i'll try to make a long story short. the things i like about the fantasy genre is some of the subject matter. it's things like elves, dragons, orcs, saytrs, nymphs, dryads, faries, goblins, ogres, minotaurs, ghosts, spirits, werewolves, vampires, tengu, kitsune, kirin, etc. most of these things were around in art or stories all over the world before frazetta. the kind of stuff that was made popular by tolkien and to a lesser extent c.s. lewis along with fairy tales myths and legends. Arthurian legends and Beowulf were pretty darn cool. most of this was around before frazetta or would have come about without frazetta because he wasn't an influence for tolkien or c.s. lewis.
art wise my favorite stuff was pre-frazetta.
the renaissance and the ninja turtle namesakes, the baroque period, art nouveau (mucha ftw), impressionists, some surrealism (started almost a decade bit before frazetta was born).
through all this the things i enjoyed the most were things like knights slaying dragons, Michael slaying teh dragon/killing the devil, some things from the baroque period, Bouguereau's work, greek nd roman art with it's many myths and legends, Bernini, and John William Watterhouse. things based on various stories that had they been made present day would have likely or could have been pushed into the "fantasy" category because of the subject matter.
aside from that i like the style and some of the key points of some of the art periods.
i'd have liked that stuff if frazetta had or hadn't come along.
what would it look like if a baroque artist painted a knight fighting a dragon?
you could argue that without frazetta making the modern fantasy scene more generally accepted that tolkien and c.s. lewis's stuff would have been less popular. then again they could have been the thing that ended up making the modern fantasy scene more generally accepted.
either way most of the stuff i like about the fantasy scene was here before frazetta so i likely would have stumbled into the whole tolkien and c.s. lewis stuff eventually simply out of enjoyment of that sort of thing.
had tolkien not come along making "high fantasy" popular i can tell you now that i wouldn't be into the whole low fantasy scene. frankly, it's unappealing to me. i find it boring.
so i'd likely still be drawing dragons and other fantasy stuff because as far as subject matter goes and the greater part of my artistic influences go they were all pre-frazetta.
as i mentioned in an earlier comment my post-frazetta influences are EXTREMELY limited.
like the phase where i drew pretty much nothing but sonic and the phase where i drew anthros which was partly inspired by satyrs. then there was the very limited anime influence on my work that can only be seen occasionally in my linework which some people say i don't really have.
because these are my influences i believe i can say that frazetta isn't an influence for me even if he was a famous, very skilled artist who had influence on the genre.
sorry again for the long drawn out conversation i'm not trying to argue i just disagree that he's got to have had an influence on any fantasy artist. like i said at the start of this we can have a difference of opinion and leave it at that.
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It doesn't have to be direct.
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i said indirect at best.
what kind of earth shattering OMGWTFBBQ!!! about his artwork am i supposed to be influenced by? don't get me wrong, i do think he was a great artist. i'm just either missing why he's got to be an influence for a fantasy artist or i don't actually find his work inspirational or see anything i really would like to emulate in it.
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He changed the game. Love it or hate it, it's the truth. Look at "fantasy art" before 1960 and "fantasy art" after 1960 and you'll see exactly what I mean.
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also, sorry if i'm being a pain in the hind parts.
i'm not trying to be i just don't think frazetta has been any real influence on me and i don't really know why he would have had to be just because i like to make fantasy art.
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pre 1960 huh... like J. Allen St. John? N.C. Wyeth? John William Waterhouse? Maxfield Parish?
after 1960's stuff... Charles Vess, Alan Lee, John Howe, Todd Lockwood, Francis Tsai, yea yea i like Samwise Didier too.
i've looked and i still don't see what exactly about Frazetta's work contains the epic change in fantasy art that makes all modern fantasy artist's influenced by him. yes he was a great artist but what about his work was so game changing? what about his work couldn't have come from anywhere else?
is it impossible for someone to be, instead, influenced by myths, legends, fairy tales, folklore, tolkien, and forgotten realms books along with anime, manga, renaissance/greek/baroque art and still end up painting fantasy art without having Frazetta as an influence?
i'd find it a much more likely statement to say that Tolkien influenced all modern fantasy artists but even that i'd think to not be all encompassing.
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Wacraft 3 FTW! (I can't do WoW, as I like drawing still... playing WoW would crush that dream). Love seeing art from Samwise :3 And I can certainly see how a lot of these artists influence your work, some more subtle than others
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I can't put my finger on how those two influenced your work. I guess you see something in them that I don't.
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Composition and color, not quite so much mark-making or linear quality.
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I've considered doing this. I've always wondered how it dodged DA's rules, though.
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Wow, and these all really shine through in your work, especially Warcraft and Sendak. It's still all you though!
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Yeah it's been kinda tough figuring it all out. It's like art soup in my head.
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